February 15, Cape Town, South Africa

Left about 8 am. First stop was Bird Island on the edge of Lamberts Bay, just behind the potato/french fry factory. Thousands of garnets, seals and terns. Lots of guano as well!

Drove for a couple of hours and then stopped at Org de Rac, an organic winery. We tried some white, rose, and a couple of reds.

They were good but I have had better. 2 or 3 more hours and we were back in Cape Town. Wow.....where has the 30 days gone????? It was a lot of fun and it went by so fast. We were always on the go with lots of things to see and do, especially all the animals! 8400 km in total, and we only flew from Cape Town to Johanneseburg! What a super trip!

Spent the afternoon drinking coffee and talking....I can not believe we were sitting after being so long on the bus each day! Oh well...it was fun. Out for dinner with a few people and then some drinks after at the bar with some others. Lots of laughs, reminiscing about the trip. Close the bar, but it closed at 11 pm!


February 14, Lamberts Bay, South Africa

Off at 8 am, with a short drive to border and then on bus. A long day, arrival at 5.30 pm.
The drive was around smaller mountains/hills on paved roads, but there was a lot of construction. The land is very dry and in places there was no vegetation at all.

Mostly small shrubs, at most 2 feet tall. The only animals I saw were goats.

Off to dinner for a fish fry! This place is a open air shack on the beach in the middle of nowhere! They bbq fish as well as smoked. The fish was amazing... I ate way too much!


February 13, Notorshama Resort, on Orange river, Namibia

An 8 am start and arrived at Resort about 2 pm. A short day as we are just across the river from South Africa. A beautiful resort, with great rooms. Ended up just stiing around and talking and going for a swim. What a lazy day. Of course caught up with internet stuff.....after all it had been a couple of days!
We made a stop at the Fish River Canyon.

This canyon is the second largest n the world, so they say, next to the Grand Canyon. This canyon was formed by tectonic activity, not errosion. Beautiful. Also nice as we were able to take an hour to walk along the ridge of the canyon. There is a 5 day walk along the river but the season for doing it is limited, by heat and flooding. Great place, and nice to get out.

Amazing trip here.....I checked google maps at one point and we were not drving on any roads...they are really just dirt roads! We drove along the river where there are many large grape farms. These are table grapes, I have not seen any Namibian wines. Most of the grapes are exported.


February 12 Seeheim, Namibia

Left the camp about 8.30. it is all gravel roads here... some pretty good, some not so good! Stopped at Hammerstein Lodge for the guide but we ended up on a game walk. This lodge has 2 cheetahs, 1 leopard and 2 caracos (lynx like cats) that are here to be rehabilitated, although they will not be able to be released back into the wild. The leopard used to be the pet of the owners son.... the son now has a hunting game farm nearby. This is where the lodge gets the meat for the cats.

Arrived at hotel about 4 pm. A long day on bus. This hotel, the Seeheim Hotel is a beautiful stone building that dates back to the late 1800s. It has been added onto but they have kept some of the original stone style. Very nice.

It is run by a couple and it is the only business in town....there are only 2 other houses. A great place for just relaxing.

They served a buffet that included zebra as the meat, done in a stroganoff style sauce. Really quite good.